Sunday, June 12, 2011

For the Record, week of 6/6-6/12/11

This has been a mostly sunny but mild week, weather-wise. A few little showers here and there - just enough to keep things growing but not ruin anybody's day. ;) As a result of our sunny but not hot weather, we've all found ourselves with a little more energy, and have been spending more time outside working.

Scarlet has been, as ever, my number one garden helper. Today we planted 36 Yukon Chief corn starts, 1 row of French Breakfast radishes & 1/2 row of Red-cored Chantenay carrots. Coming up next are the wax beans and pole beans, which have gone nuts under the grow lights and are ready to go in the ground and do their thing.

I still need to find a place to shimmy in some beets. Maybe between the rows of peas & beans?

In critter news, we had a sick little goat this week. While trimming and cleaning hooves earlier this week, we noticed that Hop had copious amounts of yellow discharge coming out of her right ear. We'd noticed a week or two before that she wasn't quite acting herself, but never did see anything wrong until we had her in the stanchion for grooming. Poor girl! I took her to the vet the next day, where they flushed her ear. The vet said that there was a LOT of gunk in there, but no foreign objects. The likely reason that she got infected is because she has such small ears (as do many Lamanchas) that can't "breathe" that well. So we're giving her ear drops once per day, and are going to irrigate her ears with a solution of one part silver sulfadiazine cream dissolved into 9 parts distilled water. If worst comes to worst, she can have the opening to her ear surgically enlarged. Boy I hope that it doesn't come to that, because that sounds spendy! Our wonderful vet, Dr. Natalee, said that in a production dairy, Hop would no doubt have been culled for this tiny defect. We're just not that intense here, but it does make me think twice about ever breeding her, even though she comes from excellent bloodlines. Luckily I have a while to think it over.

We also aquired a new roo this week who the girls have named Thunder (no pic of Thunder-chicken yet, but he looks just like this guy.). He is a white-crested black polish, like Curly, but not a frizzle, like Curly, which is a good thing, because breeding a frizzle to a frizzle doesn't work out well. The feather curling gene goes haywire and produces a "Curlie" who's feathers are overly curled and brittle. So if/when Curly and Thunder fall madly in love and have babies, about 75% of the chicks should be frizzle. I can't wait!!!

The guy who raised Thunder up to this point lives in city limits, and therefore can't have a roo. So he gave us Thunder and we gave him an Australorp hen. A good trade for all concerned.

Besides all of that gardening and critter care, this week was fairly low-key. The kiddos have just a couple weeks of school left, so I'm trying to get all of my do-not-disturb type chores out of the way before I have myself a couple of shadows 24/7. I'm forgetting something huge, I just know it.

Weekly totals-
-20 eggs
-4 knit dishcloths finished

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